Hi everyone! In the past few months, we have been working to develop some new surveys to give our participants the chance to contribute to more varied and interesting research.

Impulsiveness and Monetary Choice

Two of our new additions include Impulsiveness and Monetary Choice. The Impulsiveness survey asks questions about how impulsive or measured you tend to act and think in different situations. The Monetary Choice survey asks you to choose between two scenarios at a time and measures reward preferences and temporal discounting. People’s health is often influenced by health-related and lifestyle choices, and our hope is that these surveys can give researchers insight into how such choices can affect disease risk. Please check them out!

Cognitive Tasks

We are very excited to announce our release of interactive surveys, which are different from our traditional surveys and allow Genes for Good to study health and behaviors measured in ways other than question/answer surveys. This week we’ve released two interactive surveys called Working Memory and Category Switch which measure performance in areas such as short-term memory and multitasking. These skills, known as executive functions, help us navigate the complex world we live in and play an important role in our ability to achieve goals and stay on task.

Because such skills are difficult to measure in traditional surveys, these surveys are a bit more hands-on; instead of answering questions, you will be asked to pay close attention and respond to what’s shown on your screen. For instance, you may be shown a list of words and asked to recall some of them. These surveys will show up in a separate full-screen window, and consequently are only available on laptop or desktop computers. As always, feedback on these surveys is encouraged and appreciated. We think they work pretty well, but there’s always room for improvement!

Give the new interactive surveys a shot – your answers could help lead to some exciting breakthroughs! Measuring these executive functions is important for research, as performance can be linked to future health outcomes and mental health outcomes such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's.

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We need a lot of participants like you before we reach the necessary sample size to draw robust conclusions based on Genes for Good data, but we are growing every day. We will never be able to fully express our gratitude towards all of our participants (currently 13,500 and counting)! We are truly grateful to be conducting the first research study of its kind: one that uses the convenience of social media to reach a diverse audience with minimal burden on the participant, and hopefully helps participants better understand themselves in the process. Thank you, and spread the word!